A Spectrum of Gray
by kinnoth
Summary: Suzu overanalyzes and misses the point entirely. Yoshida x Suzu.
1. Chapter1

Disclaimer: Not mine

**A Spectrum of Gray**

It is in the crux of spring when they first meet, and the frost on the water is as white as the sand. Suzu's master gives him his scarf that day not because of the chill, but because while Suzu is comely, he is dark. His skin is the color of strong tea; it catches people's eyes as he passes, and they linger upon his brow, the angle of his cheek, the line of his throat.

'Wear this' his master says, unwinding the cloth from about his neck. 'Keep it to your face.' Suzu receives it, feels the warmth still caught within its folds, and thinks absently how naked his master's throat seems without it. He does as he's told, but with curiosity. They are half a league before they enter Hagi, where they will meet the Choshu lords, where Yoshida-sensei will present himself as their resolute revolutionary and peerless captain and his page as -- Suzu's face burns dark as he hastens to wrap the white scarf about his swarthy skin. Of course, he realizes, _of course_. He has been a child, nothing but foolish. Why should the lords look favorably upon a boy whose face is darker than any native, the color of a foreigner, strange skin over gangly limbs, a desecration of Japanese raiment?

He's dirty, Suzu thinks, fingers weak despite his conviction. He's never given it thought. His brother hadn't been this color, his brother who had been both mother and father to him -- and Suzu realizes that he's never known his parents; their loss is one he's never felt. Images unbidden swarm through his head, dizzying: colors and shapes without form. He envisions their mother, lily white and sleek-haired, her flesh pawed and blacked by the broad, filthy hands of some dirt-colored foreigner. His brother had probably kept him out of pity, fed him and raised him because his brother had been a _good_ man, honorable and dutiful and _Japanese_. Maybe this was the meaning of the expression Suzu had never recognized in his brother's eyes, that dampened determination that seemed almost like --

His master's hand gestures over his own, slides gentle against his knuckles and brushes his face, fingers pale and long and perfect. 'What is it, Suzu?' he asks, and his voice is grazing but uninflected. Suzu hadn't realized that he's almost in tears.

'Excuse me,' he says, not liking the vulnerable pitching in his voice, and he shuffles back a half-step so he can bow his head while pretending that he is no longer a child asking for comfort. 'Excuse me, Master, I've caused you difficulty. I hadn't realized that with my face --'

'Your face is acceptable,' his master interrupts. His hands reach out again, and Suzu can never be forced to realize how long his master's arms are, how flat and sturdy the curve at his wrist. 'You have the righteousness of the _sonno joi_ set upon your brow. _What_ they think when they watch you is not my concern --' he pulls the material from under Suzu's chin, spreads it over his shoulders like wings, smoothes the cloth over his cheek and the arch of Suzu's neck, palms warm and catching rough in the cloth, murmurs, '--rather, it is the _who_, that is.' The sincerity behind Yoshida-sensei's eyes is imprecise, but kind, and when he turns back towards the road, it is without a linger or a glance. Suzu waits a beat more before he follows, feet scuffling in the dust at his master's heels.

When they reach it, the townspeople do not stare less at the sheer black knife of a man and his silvered servant moving between them in the streets. The Choshu lords, gathered upon daises in piled colors and silks, look upon him pale but not unreproachful, even in the face of Yoshida-sensei's forbidding gaze.

What he knows is only what he observes --

(A black cat twines at his legs; his master's eyes are fixed elsewhere when he calmly commands Suzu to strike it with his heel. Suzu looks about him and gently disentangles the animal when his master turns his back, and a brightly clothed noble snaps his fan shut and smiles, his pet curling in his lap)

-- and Suzu does not understand it; the only effect the white scarf serves is to pull him further from within his master's shadow.


	2. companion fic, 5 years later, DVD extra

title: madness in doubt  
rating: pg-13  
pairing: yoshida/suzu (spoilers for anyone who doesn't know how the 1st series ends)  
summary: suzu go crazy :D

This body is not his master's; he can pretend, but it's not, and he would never have treated his master so insolently as he does this proxy, sprawled across its lap more indolent beast than madman transfixed. But still, he supposes, the demon is his, in all the ways that don't really matter. A manifestation of his psyche, or his psychosis – deliberate, naturally; his yearning is not - has never really been - subconscious. It's not fixation; it is simply a state of mind, a state of being. He has built himself a world from this yawning pit of want, and his master would be proud of him for this, for taking his grief and transfiguring his life with it, transforming himself.

But he's not really mad, not to himself, not to this bandaged broken proxy of elements precisely as Suzu remembers them. The illusion is magnificent, complete in every measure of the word, in the stump of his powerful arm, the violent cascade of his hair.

Never once do his demon master's eyes meet his.

Never once is he touched, or held, or comforted through the darkness that overflows from him like blood from a fatal wound.

Like the blood he never shed until he had nothing left to protect.

Like the blood that stained his hands and the once white scarf that still remains, _still remains_, his master's one consideration towards him.

His master had not been a kind man, nor gentle, nor prone towards sentimentality - but in all this he was not cruel. Honorable, a true samurai of the warrior's code, without master but never without dignity or pride.

His master would have kept him -

_(he can't even imagine it, can't even stretch his mind to those depths) _

- and Yamato, that lecherous, licentious - groping palms slick with an old man's exertion, jittery, soft brittle fingers, not like, not like -

His master would have kept him he would have kept him from -

He hadn't been defenseless, simply overcome, a stray animal who had known home, who had known hope, who had known betrayal - of those his master called friends, of he who _he_ called friend, of his own stupid, stupid incompetent- and Yamato, who had offered with hooded eyes a sympathetic word, an offering of worth, and he had turned into it, a cat turning into the palm of a soothing hand -

_(if he'd been faster, but no, wouldn't they have come? couldn't they?)_

He can find no solace in the shattered memory he does hold; a mind once broken, irretrievable. Soft moments, between dream and fantasy, holding no bearing in reality –-

He knows this, and lets himself forget what never happened, finding no fault in letting it happen now that it never will. Soft moments, gilded by moonlit slits through samurai shutters. He lets himself seek the warmth he's never felt, inclining his head just those last few inches, a hand, perhaps, long fingered and harsh, dulled by night, grace made ungainly in sleep, touching his, folding into arms like cloth; himself no coy lap boy, nor earnest faced youth, something reverent, something symmetrical in a world restored to order and right-

_(he wouldn't have kept the sword, even if it hadn't been splintered and scattered and lacking any pieces long enough to pierce his stomach; he has his brother's sword, his brother, who had been both heart and soul but this man whose face had been his world, whose eyes his universe, and -)_

His demon's armor flickers briefly from scarred flesh into bronze scales beneath his cheek, though his guardian blade becomes nothing more or less. Suzu scowls, not unprettily, because he's not entirely anyone anymore, but everyone loves a beautiful boy. 'Do stop that,' he tells it petulantly, and he lies back. His demon aquieces - it has no mind, no will, nothing for Suzu to break - and when he feels hard flesh and inhuman heat beneath his hand again, he is comforted, contented, false.


End file.
